


Chasing Hurricanes

by only_freakin_donuts



Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcohol Withdrawal, F/F, The 4 Times Luisa went to rehab, and the 4 times Rose showed up for her, roisa secret santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:15:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28297386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/only_freakin_donuts/pseuds/only_freakin_donuts
Summary: AKA, The 4 Times Luisa Alver went to rehab, and the 4 Times Rose Showed Up For Her.
Relationships: Luisa Alver/Rose Solano
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	Chasing Hurricanes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SamiraScamander](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamiraScamander/gifts).



> Merry Christmas Jana!! I hope you like it. I've had this idea in the back of my mind for a while now- I planned it out last year when I was doing my internship in an inpatient rehab centre, actually- and when I got your prompt I thought _hey I could blend these two_. Again hope you like it, and have a happy and safe holiday season! xx

**It’s 2009** and Luisa’s bouncing with nerves in her grey, plastic chair. This afternoon, she’d be back sitting in this ring of fire, and this time four members of her family, four of her biggest supporters, present company excluded, would be sitting here with her. She’s 30 days sober today, and she gets to go try this whole sobriety thing out in the real world after her graduation ceremony later today.

Her dad asked if she wanted to go anywhere specific to eat before going home, considering she hadn’t had outside food for a month, with the exception of an occasional coffee or cruller from Dunkin.

_ “Italian?”  _ he’d asked, over the phone on Tuesday night, taking up far too much of their limited time.  _ “Mexican? Dessert? Seafood?”  _

“Anything’s fine, Daddy, I’m just happy to share a meal with you all again,” she’d answered, smiling. “And thank you again, for coming up here for my grad ceremony, all of you.”

“If we cannot take a day off of work to celebrate our great achievements, what should we take a day off for?” Emilio countered back. “I am very proud of you, my dear; we all are. We would not miss this. See you on Friday.”

Now that the day had come, she was definitely craving pizza. And, uh, vodka, she was craving vodka too. She’d have to talk to her counsellor about that, before leaving today.  _ Maybe I shouldn’t be leaving yet, maybe I’m not ready. Maybe I’m wasting their time, making them come out here and hear everyone say nice things about me and tell me they’re proud of me and know I’m gonna do great out there when really, I’m just going to drink vodka before I even make it home tonight–  _

“Luisa?” The counsellor who’s leading morning reflections’ voice cuts her off from her thoughts. “How are you feeling on your last morning here?” 

She paints on a smile, as she does, as all eyes in the circle of plastic chairs and spacey stares hone in on her, The Graduation Girl. “Great!”

It still didn’t feel great, that was a lie, as she put on a dress and put effort into looking  _ pretty  _ for the first time in a month. Because, amongst other things, today was the first time in a month she’d be seeing Rose. She wanted to leave an impression, obviously. And lipstick could hide anything, even–  _ especially–  _ doubt. 

“Hey, Luisa! Your guests are here!”

She skips down the stairs, into the front hall and right into her dad’s arms first, then her brother’s. They both embrace her warmly, enamouring her with their familiarity. These hugs greeted her at airports after red-eye flights, in college dorms after gruesome exam seasons, and after long days of med school when others’ malady and suffering weighed her free spirit down. And then there’s Rose. The smell of her perfume precedes her, it’ll probably linger even after she leaves here today, too, but Luisa won’t know. She hoped to never walk back through this doorway after she walked out of it later today. 

Rose is the last to hug her, after Rafael’s latest pretty blonde girlfriend, who she’d only met one time, as the sun was setting on the summer and their dad was hosting one of his famous Marbella pool parties. Her and Rose had done more than hug that night, away from the people and the noise outside; their final bit of fun for that summer. And Luisa had done it all without a drop of alcohol, too, she didn’t need it to be happy. But when Rose left her high and dry in the fall… well, she didn’t get high, but she also didn’t stay dry. She’d tried it before– getting sober on her own– that was the only time in her life she’d had a grand mal seizure, and the thought that that may happen again terrified her more than the imminence of her own death, or mental illness, or any other of her usual fears. Rafael had done his dutiful research and found this place for her to hide out in for a month, while she recovered from her disease. It was the broken heart she was really recovering from, though. 

-

And it wouldn’t be the last time Rose led her on, and then let her down. She did it again in  **2012** , which Luisa didn’t admit even to herself until she was seated back on the green couch in the intake office of a red brick house she’d temporarily called home once, standing at the entrance of another 30 day stay there. Like meeting up with high school friends years later, she was greeted with the affinity of nothing changing, but nothing quite being the same either. You can never  _ really _ go back, can you?

It wasn’t seizures this time, but there were so many delusions. Most of them were polite, at least, and the best of them involved Rose; sitting by Luisa’s feet in her bathrobe, one leg crossed over the other, her hair in it’s natural, curly state and tossed over one shoulder. She always used to say it was just a coincidence that the products she used in her hair were rose-scented, but Luisa never believed her. She rolled her eyes at the fact that Rose, as vain and as avid a fan of wordplay that she was, just  _ coincidentally  _ selected  _ that  _ line of products amongst all the rest. That scent filled the air in the otherwise stale detox suit now, coming off Rose’s freshly washed hair. Except Luisa  _ knew  _ she wasn’t really there, she hadn’t really stepped out of the shower and gently took a seat on the end of the bed. Luisa knew she was alone, left here to either rot or bloom while her mind and body cleared itself of the toxins she’d choose to put it in.

_No,_ she doesn’t _choose_ to, _she had a disease. Her disease was pulling the strings here, she no longer had a choice._ Luisa was still working on believing that one, herself. She was so used to blaming herself, or being told she _should_ be blaming herself on the odd occasion she wasn’t… she was still learning to accept that this one actually _wasn’t_ her fault. Her counsellor said so, and she trusted that skinny little bird of a woman wholeheartedly, even when she said things like _your_ disease _is_ _mean and unfair and_ _not reflective of who you really are._

_ And it’s always going to be a part of you. You know I love seeing your smiling face every morning, but I never want to see you here again, Luisa, so you have to learn to work with this part of yourself.  _

Raf was skeptical of this particular model of thinking. “I don’t know, Lu,” he says, his disdain wrapping itself in coils like the telephone cord, wrapping around Lu’s arm and trying to take hold of her. “That sounds like it’s robbing you of your free will. You  _ have  _ free will, still.” 

“Of course I do,” she says, preparing to stand up for herself. “But, you don’t blame someone with epilepsy for having seizures, or someone with diabetes for going into insulin shock. I have a disease too, Raf.” 

“You know it isn’t the same,” he tells her, as if he can be absolutely certain. “People don’t choose diabetes, or epilepsy.”

“And I didn’t choose this. I would never choose this.” 

_ Why would I ever choose this? And why would my roommate, who’s licked drugs off of sidewalks and bathroom floors, lost her job and her house, and had to leave her four year old in foster care so she could come here and try to get better, choose this? You don’t get it.  _

Phone calls with Rose go a lot smoother. Her father’s been away for work a lot lately, and after that night Raf called less frequently, so some Tuesdays Luisa got to devote her whole 30 minute phone allowance solely to Rose. And it was  _ glorious,  _ a rare indulgence in an otherwise rather monotonous routine, and something that filled her cup when the constant self-reflection, taking inventory, naming feelings, removing her masks, playing the tape forward, making amends… when it all emptied her cup, Rose filled it back up.

“You’re doing important work,” Rose reminds her, in her gentle, soft voice. She’s almost purring. “Of course it isn’t easy, but, nothing worth it is.” 

“We’re not easy,” Luisa muses, tracing the wood of the desk she’s sitting at with her finger. “That mean we’re worth it?” 

“Perhaps,” Rose says, and Lu can hear the smile in her voice. She wonders what she’s doing on the other end of the phone.

“I miss seeing your face.” 

“Soon, Lu. Just a week and a half more, it’ll go by in a flash.”

“You know you don’t have to come to my graduation this time,” Lu tells her. “You came last time, it’s gonna be all the same thing, just different people.”

“And miss the chance to hear all the friends you’ve made share their memories of you and say how proud they are of you? Never. I want to be proud of you with them.”

“The friends I’m never gonna talk to again,” Luisa grunts. Her Big Book she got during her last inpatient stay travels with her from nightstand to nightstand, with all her old housemates’ names, numbers, and niceties penned into the back cover. But the same way summer camp or semester abroad friendships do, rehab friendships fade away, as one by one the majority of them fall back into old habits...or overdose.

“Some things are meant to last,” Rose says. “And some things just aren’t.” 

Her dad didn’t come home from Europe in time to welcome her home from rehab. He sent her flowers along with his deepest regrets, and made sure Rose and Rafael would be there, again along with Petra- who had stuck around three years longer than any other of Raf’s girlfriends, and insisted she be there for her soon-to-be sister-in-law’s rehab re-graduation. 

“This is what family does,” she insists. “Family shows up.”

Big talk for the woman who didn’t show up for Luisa’s family counselling session last week, stating it was “only for close family anyways.” (“Besides, Rafael, you know I don’t do very well in emotional settings, a family therapy session in your sister’s rehab facility just wouldn’t be a good fit for me. Send her my love, of course. And I accept her apologies, or whatever, obviously.”) Rafael had gone, he always went, and Rose gracefully sat out, at his request. He wanted to mend the fight him and Lu had been having over the phone for weeks now. She didn’t believe him when he said he understood now, ‘cause there was no way he suddenly did. He was just trying to make her happy. She could respect that.

And now, just like years before, they were standing in the doorway of this house, waiting for her to lead them into the circle of peers and plastic chairs that awaited them downstairs, ready to make a little speech. They hoped they’d never be here again.

-

But then Petra had a miscarriage. And Rafael had an eight hour long surgery to remove cancer from his body, not to mention eight months of chemo and radiation treatments before that. And  **2013** kept on throwing her curveballs. Luisa knew she shouldn’t let her sobriety balance on other people’s shoulders, but if not there, then where? How did she  _ not  _ let her loved ones’ troubles reach their grubby little hands out and push her off the wagon, how did she keep it all to herself? 

Maybe the third time was the charm, maybe this time she’d find the missing piece of the puzzle. They’d repainted in here, the walls in the common room were a shade of beige now, and the girls’ hall was a light shade of purple, while the rooms remained a different hue each. The past two times she’d stayed here, she’d taken up residence in the Green Room, also known as Room 2. Its big window faced the back of the house, with a view of the yard and the street behind it. Now, she lay down to rest in the Pink Room, Room #5. Its window just faced the Men’s House next door, it didn’t even directly face another window like it would in some weird, het romance movie where two recovering addicts who met in treatment end up getting married on their one year sober anniversary or something; it just faced a red brick wall. It felt pretty apt, opening the window to face a brick wall. That’s kind of how her life felt right now.

“You know you couldn’t possibly have caused your sister-in-law to miscarry, right?” 

When Carol said it like that, as if it were the plain truth, Luisa felt more obliged to believe it, even though she still didn’t. “But what if I did, somehow? I was her doctor, if something was wrong I should have noticed! I got her through the IVF, we made it through that horrible first trimester together, with all the morning sickness and that one she woke up bleeding, and then suddenly at twenty-seven weeks, it wasn’t good enough anymore? Why wasn’t she good enough, why wasn’t  _ I _ good enough?” 

“It wasn’t because of anything you did or didn’t do, it just happened. I’m sure you’ve had many patients miscarry before, and you don’t blame yourself for all of those too, do you?”

Luisa releases a grim chuckle. “Don’t ask me that question, Carol, in a bad enough moment I might just say yes.”

“You’re a good doctor, Luisa, and a good family member,” Carol reassures her. With a grin she adds, “You’re almost  _ too  _ good.” 

“ _ You’re  _ almost too good,” Luisa deflects, “that’s why I keep coming back, you know.” After a minute, the joking stops though. “You don’t blame yourself every time one of us relapses, right?” 

Carol smiles, patting Luisa’s leg as she moves to get up. “Don’t ask me that, Luisa, in a bad enough moment I might just say yes.” 

It took the whole 30 days, comprised of bi-weekly sit downs with Carol, and a weekly sit down with the big fancy psychologist, to get Luisa on the straight and narrow again, believing in herself again– not to mention the three classes a day and the group therapy Fridays. It didn’t help when she went to open the door the morning of her graduation– bright-eyed, bushy tailed, and expecting more than two of her family members to be there.

“Petra’s just not feeling up to socializing yet,” Raf says. “You know big, emotional things like this aren’t really in her comfort zone, this doesn’t have anything to do with… anything. It’s her, not you.” 

And maybe 30 days ago that would’ve destroyed her, but today it only stung a little bit. And the sting was definitely dampened by the fact Rose was here, and she was the quick fix to all Luisa’s booboos, like a bandaid on a skinned knee. She beams from her spot a few feet back; not in a way that would anyone suspicious, of course, not in the a way that would give away  _ this is the one I’ve been having all but phone sex with every Tuesday evening,  _ just in a way that said  _ I’m proud of you and I can’t wait to hug you.  _

Her and Rose had already discussed a plan for this moment, on their last Tuesday night phone call. 

“Luisa, before we settle in, would you mind showing me to the bathroom?” Rose asks. 

“Yes, of course. Raf, you remember how to get to the common room?”

He nods, backstepping towards the stairs. “Yup, I’ll go get settled in, mingle a little. Say hi to my old friend Carol, catch up with her a bit.”

Luisa smiles. Nah, he wouldn’t find Carol in the common room with everyone else, Carol was in her office, waiting for Luisa to show up with Rose in tow. She wanted to finally meet the secret lover her client has been gushing about for years, now. 

“She’s  _ lovely _ ,” Carol makes a point to say, quietly as they finally grace the graduation crowd with their presence. (Rose had gone ahead of them, of course, not to raise any suspicion.) “Her and the bottle, your two vices.” 

-

Luisa didn’t take that passing comment seriously, not for a few years anyway. Not until her life was falling apart around her more than ever before, and it seems that alcohol was not the cause this time. Rose was. **2016** _sucked_. 

Rose was the tornado, and she was that poor Kansas farmhouse that got swept up and away. Her father was the wicked witch in the ruby red slippers that got crushed by it all, as Luisa always suspected he would be. At first she thought she was Dorothy, emerging after the hurricane had caused a big commotion, holding onto her puppy and asking what in the world had happened, but no. She knew, somewhere deep down, that Rose was trouble. Like Carol had said that day, walking to the common room before her third graduation, Rose was a vice just like alcohol was for her. 

Someone wise had also once said you could dance in a hurricane though, but only if you were standing in the eye. Was that Brandi Carlile? (She  _ was  _ a wise old queer.) 

Well, now that song’s stuck in her head, as it spins in all the usual withdrawal motions– usual for other people, not for her, as there hadn’t been any strangeties yet; no seizures, no delusions, just the usual shakes and sweats and mood swings… and songs stuck in her head.  _ I wrapped your love around me like a chain, but I never was afraid that it would die… you can dance in a hurricane, but only if you’re standing in the eye…. _

And then Rose died, just like the song suggested. Well, actually no, the song suggested Rose’s  _ love  _ died, and it hadn’t. Even when she lay on the ground of that hospital with the blue ropes around her throat and her blue, lifeless eyes left open, Luisa knew Rose’s love for her had not died. She almost wished it had, because it would’ve been easier that way. 

She couldn’t go back to the red brick house, back to the green armchair in the intake office, waiting for Carol to come collect her hungover ass as if she were a child waiting in the principal’s office for their mother after she’d gotten into a schoolyard scuffle. She had the scratches on her face and everything. She couldn’t face Carol and say,  _ look I did it again! But you wouldn’t believe all the things that drove me to it.  _ So she went to a different treatment centre; a much shabbier one, that didn’t have a pastel rainbow of rooms, or a firepit out back for weekend bonfires, or reflections before breakfast where they all said the Serenity Prayer together and set their intentions for the day. She’d have to do that herself here. 

And she would share her graduation ceremony with 12 other women here, on the last day of the month, as opposed to the moment under the solo spotlight she got in all her previous stays. Everyone checked in and checked out the same day here, she was part of a “class”. She was okay with this, actually, it’s not like she had anyone that would show up for her this time; her father was- well,  _ in the ground _ was technically wrong- as was Rose, and Petra and Rafael were far from her biggest fans currently. Susanna had come to visit– she was allowed visitors more often here– a lovely irony now that almost no one who would  _ want  _ to visit her, but when she had plenty of support she got one visit a month– and she was going to pick her up tonight, but she said couldn’t leave work for the actual graduation. But at least, with a group graduation, Luisa would be splitting the attention and the love between her housemates, and their loving families and friends that they always talked about. Their support would fill the room with warmth, you would never even notice Luisa’s family wasn’t there.

She got quiet, when her housemates asked them, often taking pity on her when she said both her parents had passed away. Her new counsellor hadn’t even gotten much out of her about them...except the poor, young woman got  _ everything  _ about Rose, no holding back. Luisa absolutely knew there was no use in holding back in therapy, you weren’t going to get anything out of it if you weren’t rigorously honest. So they did grief work, set new routines for Luisa that were more independent, now that she had no choice but to be– even though she had Susanna, she didn’t want to become dependent on her for her sobriety, or her sanity. She was just a nice add on. 

“You’re going to be okay,” her new counsellor told her. Her voice wasn’t as convincing as Carol’s was. “I believe in you. You can do hard things.”

And it was hard, when she saw all her new friends with their families– the kids she’d seen endless pictures of, the parents she’d heard mimicked at the dinner table, the sisters whose borrowed sweaters she’d borrowed off her housemates– and her own family wasn’t amongst the small crowd. 

“There’s mine,” her friend Katie says, a finger pointed to a wriggly little boy and an older woman sitting in the front row of the visitor’s side of the room. Beside her, Mina volunteers, “There’s mine,” pointing at a grown man who must be her husband. 

_ And there’s mine?!  _ Luisa's eyes have to be deceiving her, but she could  _ swear _ – right there, in the back row, trying to blend in,  _ that’s Rose.  _ Those eyes are unmistakable, even behind black frames, and curtained by short hair dyed dark.  _ That’s Rose, but it can’t be Rose.  _

_ It’s happening again.  _

She gets up, unsure exactly of where she’s going but finding herself walking out of the room. Daria, her new Carol, would be sitting in the staff office right now, printing out graduation certificates and signing them in her delicate handwriting, filling out discharge papers and putting out any little last minute fires. This was about to be a  _ big _ last minute fire,  _ sorry Daria.  _

But the woman in the back row has had her eyes fixed on Luisa, too. She sees her on the move and sets off after her, hoping to catch her in the hallway. Luisa can’t exactly run away from her, an imaginary woman, or she’ll attract attention in front of all these people. So she moves fast, but “Rose” moves faster. 

“Luisa!”

She doesn’t say anything for a moment, staring into Rose’s eyes. For a moment, she doesn’t even  _ care  _ if they're real or not, her heart’s just happy to see them again, here for her when she could really use the support. And that’s when Rose leans in for a kiss. This would have to be a pretty compex delusion, for Luisa to not only see and hear Rose, but smell her, feel her, and taste her too. 

Luisa pulls away as soon as she gets a hold of her senses again. “What are you doing here?!”

“You didn’t think I was going to let you do this alone, did you?” Rose asks simply. She looks around them, and then back to Luisa. “I don’t think I like this place as much as the last one.” 

“You are supposed to be  _ dead!”  _ Luisa says, in a hushed tone. 

“And you’re supposed to be three years sober. I’m sorry that I impeded on that.” 

“Y-you didn’t,” Luisa shakes her head. She repeats a mantra that she developed, in her stint after Petra’s miscarriage. “My sobriety isn’t made or broken by other people.”

_ Rose never applied to that. _

Rose nods, startling when Luisa leans in and gives her a tight,  _ tight  _ squeeze.  _ She’s touch-starved, the poor thing.  _ Rose strokes her hair and kisses her forehead. “We’ll go out to eat after this, how bout that? Do you have anything specific you’re craving?”

“Pizza?” Luisa asks, looking up to meet Rose’s eyes. She  _ always  _ craved a good pizza after getting out of a treatment centre– something cheesy and greasy with a million calories and maybe some olives.

“We can do that,” she agrees. “But right now we have to go back in there, and you’ve gotta get your certificate and have everyone clap for you. Then pizza, I’ll meet you right back here.”

So Luisa went back to that spot at the bottom of the staircase, watching the stream of people flood out of the ceremony, waiting for the back row to let out. Waiting for  _ her.  _ She waited until there were only a few people left in the room, and Rose wasn’t one of them.  _ When did she slip out? How did I miss her? And why would she just leave me here like that? _

“Hey!” a voice comes from the top of the stairs. It isn’t Rose’s voice though; it’s a strong, sweet Southern tone, speaking through a smile as usual. “I got here fast as I could, looks like my timing was quite alright! Were you waitin’ for someone?” 

Luisa blinks a few times as Susanna descends the stairs. “Y-yeah, I was waiting for you!” she lies. She smiles, too. It  _ is  _ good to see her. Second place was good too, it was still silver. 

Susanna takes her hand. “I was thinking we could go get something to eat on the way home, how ‘bout some pizza?” 

_ How’d she always know?  _ Luisa wonders.  _ She always knows things I’ve never told her. She amazes me, even if she isn’t Rose. _

“I’d like that,” she agrees. 

She takes one last look at what remains of the graduation ceremony before allowing herself to be swept away by Susanna. For just a minute there, in that hallway with her arms wrapped tight around Rose, she’d stepped back into the eye of the hurricane and danced, for just a minute– if it had even been real at all. She couldn’t spend forever chasing hurricanes, could she?

That’s the kind of madness that led people to drink. And her sobriety wasn’t made or broken by other people.

  
( _ But Rose never applied to that.) _


End file.
